Affiliate Safe Community  Support Centre - Centre for Peace Action

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Centre for Safety Promotion
Country: South Africa
Population: South Africa 2000 – 43 000 000; Thembehlile –27 000
Program Started: Has taken form successively since the late –1980s
Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre: Designation year: 1998

Identity: The CPA was initiated in 1990 as an outcome of the first hospital-based epidemiological study of injuries in Johannesburg. According to this 1989-1990 survey, "coloured" residents of Eldorado Park manifested the highest injury incidence of all groups, and the highest rates of non-fatal violent injuries. While initiated by social scientists in the former Health Psychology Unit, the CPA was from its inception designed as a community-based programme that would operate as a partnership between professionals and community residents, who are members of both the CPA staff and the Centre’s Governing Board. Since late 1995 the ISHS (Institute for Social and Health Sciences) has been a WHO Collaborating Centre for Injury and Violence Prevention, and in this role has been able to draw strongly on the experience and example of the CPA as an applied injury prevention initiative that is both community-based and information-driven. In addition to the obvious value of being able to disseminate the CPA’s lessons through the Institute’s already established global and regional network, WHO recognition of the CPA as a "safe community" remains important for a number of reasons.

Mission:
The mission of the Institute for Social and Health Sciences and its Centre for Peace Action is to:function as an internationally and locally recognized African research centre of excellence within the social and health sciences, promoting research and encouraging expertise in methodological, theoretical, policy and intervention areas.

Vision:
Fundamental to the Institute’s and the CPA’s public health vision is the recognition of illness and suffering as produced by the micro- and macro-environments into which people are born, develop and die, and its activities are intended to stimulate individual and social responses aimed at changing the social, behavioural and environmental factors that cause suffering and illness. Accordingly, the Institute’s focus is upon the individual not as the pre-given origin or end-point of pathological processes and actions, but on the behavioural tendencies of individuals and groups as an outcome of causal relationships to people (e.g. parents, peers), to products (e.g. guns, alcohol, pornography, media violence), and to environments (both physical and socio-cultural). Suffering and illness are thus cast in relational terms, and through research these risk factors can be identified and then manipulated to prevent the problem.

Aims of the Centre:
Rooted in a community that was historically marginalised and disenfranchised by the apartheid state, the CPA epitomises a programme that works with a high risk community and aims to enhance safety-related equity and justice. Within this broad framework, attention is particularly focussed upon the sub-groups most vulnerable to injury, namely residents of informal settlements, young mothers and youth, the unemployed, victims of violence, and child labourers.

• Assist communities in the preparation and submission of their applications for Safe communities status.

• Provide on-going technical and training assistance to Safe communities operating in the sector.

• Assist Safe community programmes to develop their research and injury prevention capacities.

• Confer Safe communities status to worthy communities operating on the African continent.

• Help designated communities maintain and develop their status by way of regular and supportive reviews and quality assurance inputs.

• At the international level our role is to:

• Stimulate interest in issues affecting injury prevention in low to middle income contexts.

• Facilitate relevant exchanges in the form of research collaborations, capacity building and exchange programmes.

• Encourage mutually beneficial research between those working in low/middle income and high-income contexts.
• Disseminate information on best practices for injury prevention and safety promotion.

• Women’s’ Led Safety Promotion and Leadership Development;
• Family Counselling and Development;
• Youth and Schools-based Services;
• Community Outreach Services;
• Peoples’ History Project;
• Small Business and Safety;
• The Three Neighbourhoods Safety Promotion Programme;
• Information Management and Documentation.

Publications:

In addition information is distributed through several existing Institute publications which include a monograph series, a community report-back series, a research and technical report series and an occasional paper series. Recently the Institute and its CPA launched two safe communities newsletters that are distributed in South Africa and several other parts of the continent. Learning groups in the form of small focus group discussions, seminars, colloquia and workshops are encouraged especially in contexts where there are no developed telecommunication systems or technologies. The kinds of information that this core activity seeks to develop and disseminate include:

• Safety promotion and prevention practice guidelines;
• Strategies for the dissemination of workable Best Practices;
• Best management practices for safety promotion for different sub-regions of South Africa and the African continent as a whole;
• Best research practices for rapid programme evaluation; and
• Best policy options for safety promotion in low-income settings.
• Customised reports that are prepared on requests from the research and service communities.
  

Staff:

Lenasia:
Mildred Dreyer
Institute for Social and Health Sciences
and Centre for Peace Action
P.O. Box 1087
Lenasia 1820
Tel: +27 11 - 857 1142/3
Fax: +27 11 - 857 1770
E-mail: psych@icon.co.za
Website: http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/ishs/new/index.html

Cape Town:
Samed Bulbulia
Institute for Social and Health Sciences
and Centre for Peace Action
P.O. Box 406
Athlone 7764
Tel: +27 21 - 686 2696
Fax: +27 21 - 685 5331
: samed@iafrica.com

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Centre for Peace Action, Institute for Social and Health Sciences, Johannesburg, South Africa- Application as an Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre

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Copyright © 1999-2000 Dept. of Public Health Sciences.

Updated by Moa Sundström, 2002-10-29 14:39.